[Disclaimer:
The opinion expressed in this article are solely Frosty Wolldridge's
alone and not necessary the opinion of NWV, its staff or other writers.]

One
look at your evening news or daily newspaper, you will see dozens
of articles about the environment: fisheries collapsing, floods in
Australia, extinction of a species, polluted air over cities, cancers
stemming from chemicalization of foods and much more.

Notice
gasoline rising toward $4.00 a gallon in the USA. Soon enough, it
will be $5.00 a gallon and more. It’s already $9.00 a gallon
in Europe. It will be $10.00 a gallon in our country soon enough.
Why? Supply and demand! It will change the way we live, dramatically.

With
all our advancement in America toward health and welfare, we fail
to connect the dots as to our quality of life and carrying capacity
of North America. One makes the other possible. Without living within
the carrying capacity of any landmass, quality of life degrades.

Carrying
capacity definition: it is the finite amount of water, arable land,
growing season, resources, animals and forests on a finite landmass
that can support a specific species. Humans included!

You
see it daily in the United States. You see it in our gridlocked, air
polluted, expensive and crowded cities. You see it more clearly in
countries like China and India, or even Mexico. They represent unsustainable
and overloaded civilizations. Ultimately, as more and more resources
diminish, their civilizations will degrade. Ultimately, quality of
life degrades as human numbers rise.

Since
American women have averaged 2.03 children since 1970, we remain a
stable and sustainable population. But what changed that equation
to add 100 million people since 1965? The late Teddy Kennedy’s
destructive legacy for our country: Immigration Reform Act of 1965.
Here’s how it’s destroying our quality of life and carrying
capacity from an expert.

The
late Dr. Garret Hardin talked about carrying capacity:

“A
diet of grain or bread is symbolic of minimum living standards; wine
and beef are symbolic of all forms of higher living standards that
make greater demands on the environment. When land used for the direct
production of plants for human consumption is converted to growing
crops for wine or corn for cattle, fewer calories get to the human
population. Since carrying capacity is defined as the maximum number
of animals (humans) an area can support, using part of the area to
support such cultural luxuries as wine and beef reduces the carrying
capacity. This reduced carrying capacity is called the cultural carrying
capacity. Cultural carrying capacity is always less than simple carrying
capacity.

“Energy
is the common coin in which all competing demands on the environment
can be measured. Energy saved by giving up a luxury can be used to
produce more bread and support more people. We could increase the
simple carrying capacity of the earth by giving up any (or all) of
the following luxuries, i.e., street lighting; vacations; most private
cars; air conditioning; and artistic performances of all sorts--drama,
dancing, music, and lectures. Since the heating of buildings is not
as efficient as multiple layers of clothing, space heating would be
forbidden.

“Is
that all? By no means to come closer to home, look at this book [Environmental
Science]. The production and distribution of such an expensive treatise
consume a great deal of energy. In fact, the energy bill for the whole
of higher education is very high (which is one reason tuition costs
so much). By giving up all education beyond the eighth grade, we could
free enough energy to sustain millions more human lives.

“We
can maximize the number of human beings living at the lowest possible
level of comfort, or we can try to optimize the quality of life for
a much smaller population.

“At
this point a skeptic might well ask does God give a prize for maximum
population? From this brief analysis we can see that there are two
choices. We can maximize the number of human beings living at the
lowest possible level of comfort (China and India), or we can try
to optimize the quality of life for a much smaller population.

“What
is the carrying capacity of the earth? Is it a scientific question?
Scientifically, it may be possible to support 50 billion people at
a bread level. But is this what we want? What is the cultural carrying
capacity?

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“An
even greater difficulty must be faced. So far we have been treating
the capacity question as a global question, as if there were a global
sovereignty to enforce a solution on all people. But there is no global
sovereignty (one world), nor is there any prospect of one in the foreseeable
future. We must make do with nearly 200 national sovereignties. That
means, as concerns the capacity problem, we must ask how nations are
to coexist in a finite global environment if different sovereignties
adopt different standards of living.

18
million humans starve to death annually worldwide, year in and year
out!

“Now
comes an appeal from a distant land where millions are starving because
their population has overshot the carrying capacity. We are asked
to save lives by sending food. (Or, by immigrating them out of their
countries to our country) So long as we have surpluses we may safely
indulge in the pleasure of philanthropy. But the typical population
in such poor countries increases by 2.1 percent a year-or more; that
is, the country's population doubles every 33 years-or less. After
we have run out of our surpluses, then what?

“The
last question may sound ethically compelling, but let's look at the
consequences of assigning a preemptive and supreme value to human
lives. There are at least 2 billion people in the world who are poorer
than the 40 million legally poor in America, and they are increasing
by about 80 million per year. Unless this increase is brought to a
halt, sharing food and energy on the basis of need would require the
sacrifice of one amenity after another in rich countries. The final
result of sharing would be complete poverty everywhere on the face
of the earth to maintain the earth's simple carrying capacity. Is
that the best humanity can do?

“To
date, there has been overwhelming negative reaction to all proposals
to make international philanthropy conditional upon the stopping of
population growth by the poor, overpopulated recipient nations. Foreign
aid is governed by two apparently inflexible assumptions.

“
The right to produce children is a universal, irrevocable right of
every nation, no matter how hard it presses against the carrying capacity
of its territory. When lives are in danger, the moral obligation of
rich countries to save human lives is absolute and undeniable.

“Considered
separately each of these two well-meaning doctrines might be defended;
together they constitute a fatal recipe. If humanity gives maximum
carrying capacity questions precedence over problems of cultural carrying
capacity, the result will be universal poverty and environmental ruin.
The moral is a simple ecological commandment Thou shalt not transgress
the carrying capacity.

“Or
do you see an escape from the harsh dilemma?”

I
brought you this interview to begin a discussion about carrying capacity
in the United States and our quality of life. We must ask ourselves:
since the world adds 80 million annually, can we continue importing
them into the United States without end? Since that 80 million has
overwhelmed all of the third world countries, should we take in 80
million poor annually for religious, ethical or moralistic reasons?

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Since
we’re importing 1.5 million annually, what is it doing to our
civilization?

Listen
to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews
top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots"
at www.themicroeffect.com
at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

Frosty
Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families
in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents
and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His published
books include: "HANDBOOK FOR TOURING BICYCLISTS" ; “STRIKE THREE! TAKE
YOUR BASE”; “IMMIGRATION’S UNARMED INVASION: DEADLY CONSEQUENCES”; “MOTORCYCLE
ADVENTURE TO ALASKA: INTO THE WIND—A TEEN NOVEL”; “BICYCLING AROUND THE
WORLD: TIRE TRACKS FOR YOUR IMAGINATION”; “AN EXTREME ENCOUNTER: ANTARCTICA.”
His next book: “TILTING THE STATUE OF LIBERTY INTO A SWAMP.” He lives
in Denver, Colorado.

Since
American women have averaged 2.03 children since 1970, we remain a stable
and sustainable population. But what changed that equation to add 100
million people since 1965? The late Teddy Kennedy’s destructive
legacy for our country: Immigration Reform Act of 1965.